MediaArtHistories: Tools and International Strategies for its Research, Collection and Preservation
The evolution of media art has a long history and now with immersion, interaction, interface design, AI, NFT etc. new technological variants have appeared. However, this art cannot be fully understood without its history; "depth of field" analyses of images can play an important role in facilitating our political and aesthetic analysis of the present. The comparison can also show what is really new?... In order not to lose the art of the last decades irretrievably, numerous documentation and preservation projects have been initiated. What could new infrastructures look like that allow researching media art on a global scale, and how would the museum landscape have to change to meet the requirements of digital art forms?
About the Lecture About the Speaker
The evolution of media art has a long history and now with immersion, interaction, interface design, AI, NFT etc. new technological variants have appeared. However, this art cannot be fully understood without its history; "depth of field" analyses of images can play an important role in facilitating our political and aesthetic analysis of the present. The comparison can also show what is really new?... In order not to lose the art of the last decades irretrievably, numerous documentation and preservation projects have been initiated. What could new infrastructures look like that allow researching media art on a global scale, and how would the museum landscape have to change to meet the requirements of digital art forms?
Grau served for 20 years as Chair Professor for Image Science at various Universities. Since 1999 he is also Director of the Archive of Digital Art (ADA) LINK. More than 350 lectures and keynotes at conferences worldwide. Grau's “Virtual Art. From Illusion to Immersion”, MIT Press 2003 (Book of the Month Scientific American) is with approx. 2700+ citations internationally among the most quoted art history monographies since 2000. His publications are translated in 15 languages. Grau is an elected member of the Academia Europaea and received several awards. His main research is in histories of media art, immersive images, art and emotion, the history of telepresence, artificial life and digital humanities. Since 2005 Grau is head of the MediaArtHistories Society (Vienna/Berlin) and founding director of its world Conference Series. The volume MediaArtHistories, MIT Press, received 50+ international reviews. Recently: Museum and Archive on the Move (2017), Digital Art under the Looking Glass (2019) and Retracing Political Dimensions (2021). Grau conceived new Digital Humanities tools for image science and developed new international curricula: MediaArtHistories MA, Image Science, Digital Collection Management and the EU supported MediaArtsCultures Program.